Swalwell didn't have it.

AOC

     “She’s got a good sense, an ‘it’ factor, which is pretty good, but she knows nothing."

      Donald Trump, describing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 

Celebrities are assigned a Q Score, a measurement of their brand familiarity and appeal. Some stars draw an audience, others don't. 

Eric Swalwell just dropped from the presidential race. He is going back to attending to his Congressional District and current office. He was on cable TV a lot over the past year, talking about a single subject, the investigation into Trump's Russian connection, financial dealings, and obstruction of justice. He was famous among political activists. He was on TV.

It didn't matter. 

He gave wide notice that he would be at a winery on the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border on a pleasant day in April and I was one of thirty people there. Click for my report on the event

He spoke about Trump's crimes, impeachment, guns, health care. He voiced the familiar suite of progressive positions voiced by all the leading Democrats. It is a good platform. 

Swalwell is a congressman, a former prosecutor, son of a cop, a young father. It is a good biography. 

Swalwell

He is square jawed and fit, and on TV and in person looks like Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman. It is a good look. 

On paper he looked promising.  But he didn't have "it", not this cycle anyway. No audience, no media, no buzz.

Meanwhile, Trump is moving toward re-election, if the economy doesn't collapse or we stumble into war. Democrats need to get their minds around this. 

Historically, the issues that brought the new party into office take eight years, not four, to work themselves out. Besides, Trumps poll numbers are up since last quarter. What is new? What is making things better for Trump? 

He is communicating he is dead serious about defending the borders and Democrats only know what they are against--family separation, cages, prosecutions, ICE-- not what steps they will take to deal with existing and new people here illegally. Trump talks a good game on the economy, taking credit for jobs he didn't save and economic expansion he didn't cause, but polls show people in fact do credit him. He sells hype like Trump Steaks and Trump University and he got away with it. He is good at selling.

Click: Washington Post

Trump has the electoral votes to win again. White working class social conservative voters are over-represented in the Upper Midwest states, and Trump is on track to winning those states, putting him over the top again. Polls show voters don't want open borders, nor reparations for black Americans, and they don't want a Socialist, but the Democratic candidates on track to winning the nomination--Warren, Sanders, Harris--will be easy to portray as open border, black voter coddling Socialists. The pressure within the Democratic voter base--progressive activists plus southern state blacks--will bring that result. We see it in place now.

Except for Biden. 

Biden would be attacked in the other direction, not as a liberal socialist but as yet another tiresome corrupt swamp-dwelling establishment Democrat, just like Hillary, only older and half senile. Biden is affable and well known, but he doesn't have "it," nor the rhetorical ability to parry Trump. Biden's long history is a disqualifier. 

That will make the election a choice election rather than a referendum on Trump. Trump would lose the referendum, but win the choice after he disqualifies his opponent the way he disqualified Hillary.

The people who have a potential alternative policy view to the Democratic front runners, a jobs-oriented, border-defending, black and white people are both OK policy platform, have even less "it" than does Swalwell. Someone with star quality would have this lane to himself, but none do. Delaney, Hickenlooper, Bennet, Bullock, Ryan, and Moulton all seem competent but none of them can attract an audience, much less hold one. 

They are no JFK. Nor AOC.

Nor do they have Trump's ghastly but undeniable star quality ability to stay the center of attention. Unless he brings the country into economic or military disaster--which could happen--he is on track to re-election.